Weigh this one up, boneheads

Abandon ounces, pints and gallons now, peer of realm says

FYI, NASA does NOT use the "imperial system". NASA uses the metric system, like the rest of the world. The suckers who crashed the Mars probe work for Lockheed Martin (USA). How embarrassing!

The problem with the "imperial system" is not that you have different units per se. The problem is that you have numerous different units for the same physical quantity. Take the distance. In the metric system you have only the metre. In the "iperial system" you have mils, inches, feet, yards, miles etc.. Or take the weight. The metric system defines the gram. Period. In the "imperial system" you have even different units for solid and liquid objects. STUPID! Apropos "mil". That is also used to aim a canon. NUTS! How about the temperature? Fahrenheit took his own body temperature to define 100 degrees. IDIOTIC. Not to mention the funny numbers used to convert between the various units of the "imperial system". Well, maybe it's cool to be "different".

"Homeland Security Department official obtained Ph.D. from diploma mill" http://www.washingtontechnology.com/news/1_1/daily_news/20849-1.html

"Conquest is easy. Control is not." [Kirk, 'Mirror, Mirror', stardate unknown]

I forgot to give a reference (see below) - but, hey, since when does The Inquirer attach great importance to proper citations. ;-)

NASA, Mars Climate Orbiter Mishap Investigation Board, Report (1999) The report is on NASA's web server.

Next time before you post another article about the ridiculous "imperial system", think about those whose work over years is dragged into deep shit because of people who insist on the "imperial system" from the stone age (1 stone = 14 pounds, funny, isn't it?)

Name supplied

[Bring back the peck, the cubit, the bushel and the fathom we say, Ed.]

US never used the Imperial system

I realize that you were quoting, so it's not your fault, but the U.S. does not and has never used the Imperial System of measurements. The Imperial System was enacted by the British Parliament in 1824 and took effect in 1826, long after the U.S. stopped paying attention.

This is especially clear when one looks at the headline-quoted ounces, pints and gallons; the U.S. uses the Queen Anne gallon, established by the English Parliament in one of its last acts before the 1707 Act of Union took effect. The Imperial System created an entirely new gallon out of whole cloth, defined as ten pounds of water at a specific temperature, in mimicry of the early metric system's links between units of mass and unit volumes of water.

It might thus be noted that the Imperial System cannot even be defended on grounds of the traditional against the modern, since it wasn't invented until *after* the Metric system. It's as absurd as a decimilized pound, a "House of Lords" in which actual hereditary peers have no power, or a Protestant church that maintains seven sacraments . . .

Steven EE

Imperial system long gone

Dear Mike,

It is my understanding that the imperial system has been superceded already.

As I understand it, miles, inches, pints etc have already been legally defined in terms of metric SI units for many years.

Best regards

Lorenzo (Italian, but comfortable with all sorts of imperial measures except stones)

PS Of course you imperialists plain don't understand metrics: you buy milk in bottles of 1.136 litres. Why not 1 litre? or 1.5? You would not dream of asking for 1 and 2 16ths of a pint of bitter, would you?

And yesterday I went to the store to buy some plastic sheeting from a roll: 6 pounds per metre, said the sign. "I need 125 cm, thanks" -- "Sorry love, I can't give you 125 cm, only 1 or 2 metres. The computer cannot calculate decimals" she said.

Do you need 75 cm of clear plastic sheeting I can sell you cheap? I can calculate it in my head.

Mozilla filla

Dear Mr. Farrell, dear Mr. Magee,

I found your article to be somewhat incomplete. 1. It's a _windows_ security issue. IE is still broken and will fixed only by Windows XP SP2 in a couple of weeks. There are no updates announced for Windows NT or Windows 2000 at all! Enter shell:windows otepad.exe in IE and you see what I mean.

When Mozilla receives a shell: request, it used to passs it on to an external handler in Windows. The "fix" for this is to disable this functionality which, as far as I can tell, is totally unnecessary to begin with. External handlers -- programs outside Mozilla -- have no specific security model, so the only way to deal with them is to make individual exceptions like this one. Messy? Yes. But that's Windows.

2. Mozilla.org's latest versions doesn't have the flaw anymore, because mozilla.org has released new versions for that purpose, which are Firefox 0.9.2, Thunderbird 0.7.2 and Mozilla 1.7.1, see http://www.mozilla.org/ There's also a small patch users can install: http://www.mozilla.org/security/shell.html

3. Also note that the report was from 2004-07-07 06:46 PDT, see here. I'd say mozilla.org's reaction was pretty fast. You'd have to agree if you read that bug report.

This page has a nice comment on this.

Regards,
Steffen Wilberg

Mini You, Mini Me, Aha!

Apple announces global iPod mini launch

Since I just ripped Mr. Farrell for his incompetent, embarrassing article ( here), I thought it only fair to compliment you on doing a much better job in your piece. I got the info I wanted, your reporting was brief, yet complete, and your clear writing did not distract from the content.

Thank you for redeeming the Inquirer as a place for useful journalism. "News, reviews, facts and friction" is a nifty saying, but the bottom line is whether or not the content is credible, readable, and believable. You hit it on all three counts.

I've copied your editor on this to show him what a good article looks like.

Best regards,
Doug Semark

LA, I say

The law is nothing new. Several cities around LA (technically in LA county) have had similar "laws." Talks of shootings and stabbings at lan shacks or what have you were prevalent a few years back, and real or not, I remember several places closing their doors during school hours, or permanently. Having visited several in my neighborhood, I can tell you that there is indeed a violent atmosphere, not because of the violent games, but because of the people attracted to them.

Cyber cafes were a haven to the habitually truant, the latch-keys, and to gangs. I've never witnessed any violence aside from the usual swearing over a line of computers, but cyber cafes did seem to attract violent types.

I think it's sad that the games always get the bad rap.

It's clear to me, as it is to most gamers, that the location (LA) was the source of the violence/truancy. It was already there. It just decided to condense at a place they could play counterstrike.

Name supplied

I have a foot, not a metre

Metric is all well and good, but I have a foot, not a meter. A hundred F is really hot and 0 F is really cold and 60-80 is pretty nice. Zero C is pretty cold, but bundling up will suffice, but you're dead long before you hit 100 C at which point the sprinklers aren't far from going off. I still can't remember if it is 30 C out, whether I'll be hot or cold.

I prefer metric wrenches, since there are no fractions needed. Engine clearances are better expressed in thousandths of an inch. The rest is just according to how your meter and spec book read. If I have metric specs, I don't mind metric clearances. Since I can't touch inside a computer chip, I really don't care how they measure it. This is becoming moot as more equipment has electronic dials which will measure metric or English, however your little heart desires.

The gauges on my new (relatively) welding equipment have two scales, which are both too small to read, plus none of the lines line up with the pointer very well. I don't really need more than 1-5 psi for one tank and 5-30 on the other.

The metric boosters say their system is simpler, but we wind up with kilometers, millimeters, centimeters, decimeters, and worse for volumetric measure.

Now, the English Pint: THAT's a measure! (No Mike, not for whiskey) Nobody ever has shoes wide enough for me, so who cares how they measure them.

Toby

My daddy told me that politicians were just a bunch of damn lawyers trying to be business men. My appreciation for his words continues to grow. What we need is a measure for politicians.

Dell Axim tale of woe

Well, the story goes like this. I'm a recent high school grad, and when my dad asked me what I wanted for a grad present, I decided that a Dell Axim X30 with a keyboard and a few other fun little accessories would suit my college needs better than an expensive laptop. We ordered it, and in 2 days the Axim showed up. It came in a box with 2 manuals, a Windows PPC 2003 cd, power adapter, belt case (which the unit will NOT fit into), and the stylus.

My other accessories that I'd ordered were: cradle, keyboard, rhinoskin case, screen protectors, and some extra styli. That was June 7th. When I checked Dell's site that night it said that the accessories would be shipped on the 21st. This did not make me happy, but I figured 2 weeks was not too bad to wait. On the 20th, we recieved a phone call that it would not be shipped until July 7th. This was the first of about 15 such calls/emails we've recieved since then and at the present time the estimated ship date of my stuff is somewhere in SEPTEMBER.

I'm an IT person, and I've had to deal with dell on things like this before, but never with a delay like this. I'd also like to accentuate the point that without the cradle, I cannot install any software on this little devil, and if I did not know my computer name, would not be able to transfer files either. To sum this all up, I've got a 500 dollar ppc here that is more or less useless because I can't use it in class effectively without a keyboard, can't use any programs on it without a cradle, and can't take it anywhere with me because I have no way of protecting the screen. I'd like to know if there's any way I can contact someone at dell who gives a shit, or if there's a way to get some sort of compensation out of dell. TheInquirer has been a great tech source for me for close to a year now, and I figured that noone would know better than you.

Thanks
Paul Crist
Pennsylvania, US

[Anyone from Dell reading? Ed.]

Sun, Boneheads et al

Hello Charlie,

I really like your articles on the Inquirer.

I agree with everything you said in "Sun's Java gets on the bonehead train".

The one thing I would add is that as somebody who is working in the technical field (I'm more of a hardware man but use plenty of software), this is what the general impression on software version. Obviously, it's just a big generalisation but it's interesting how many times it is actually true. I know a lot of people feel similarly.

0.x -- This is obviously an alfa/beta and should be treated as such. 1.0 -- Whoa! Probably quite unstable. Don't use it for anything critical. 1.x to 3.x -- Probably a mature software. The developers had time to iron out bugs, nail down the UI and get the features right. 4.x and greater -- The developers keep chopping and changing. Chances are they can never get it right. If they are changing the software this often, it's a real pain to upgrade all the time.

So, on this account, the sons of Sun have actually made things look worse.

I could add a big rant about marketing in general, but you've written one for me, already! :-)

Cheers,

Sandor

P.S.: I can't resist... Just one glowing example. Several years ago when they started with comms market deregulations in Australia, the then young turk of telcos, Optus started up. They kicked things out with a big marketing campaign with double-page ads in the newspapers. Their slogan said something like this: "We will make you feel as if you were the only person in the world with a phone." Being the only person in the world with a phone sounded eminently useless for the average person and the plug was quickly pulled on the campaign. With a change of tack, the next day they took out double page ads saying "Yes". In really large font...

There is probably special classes and training courses for marketeers, to teach them how to shoot oneself in the foot in the most spectacular fashion.

HP and Dell

Adamson

It is quite obvious that rational decision-making has not existed in the NewAgeP for several years, as evidenced by their frantic rush to turn themselves into YADW, "Yet Another Dell Wannabe". As a long-time user of first DEC, then Compaq (stifles a laugh) systems, starting in the pre-historic ages with a PDP-11/23 running RSX-11M V2.1, until I had Alphaclusters running OpenVMS 7.0 (at which point I could see the handwriting on the wall and opted out), I sincerely do wonder about the quality and professionalism of the NewAgeP's so-called management team. To allow ego, spitefulness, and emotional baggage to dictate key executive decisions is a total disservice to the poor, screwed stockholders.

To say the Alpha chip and systems built from it were technological "marvels" (hehe), is to downplay the fact that these systems were (and still are to some extent) a major source of revenue in the B-for-billions of dollars per annum. Considering that the PDP business of the former DEC is still alive and well, having been sold years ago to Mentec, which still turns a pretty fair amount of sales on the product line, for NewAgeP to decide to orphan what would be a major business and drive it into nothingness smacks of sheer idiocy. I thought business schools were supposed to impart a semblance of objectivity, not egotistical stupidity.

If NewAgeP doesn't want the Alpha business unit, why not spin it off? Oh, wait. It might actually survive, grow, and compete with NewAgeP's lust to be a Dell wannabe. Why anyone would want to become a thrall of Intel is beyond me. Especially as Intel has left the processor business to dabble in building heaters.

NewAgeP should stick to selling measurement instruments (oh, wait, it divested itself of that too!), printers, and plotters.

Just another rant from a saddened long time PDP/VAX/Alpha customer.

Name supplied